IAAW

Fusion Bolt has CP requirements. Short for Combat Power, CP is a hidden stat that dictates a monster's Combat Rating, which is altered based on your CP versus a monster's CP. A monster's Combat Rating ranges between six levels; Weakest, Weak, Normal, Strong, Awful, and Boss. A monster's Combat Rating can be seen via the Alt key; monsters with a Combat Rating of Normal will not have a Combat Rating shown.

As for how this applies to Fusion Bolt, Rank E Fusion Bolt requires you to defeat Normal-ranked and Strong-ranked monsters. Because of this, you will need to find monsters with a "Normal" Combat Rating (no visible Combat Rating) and monsters with a "Strong" Combat Rating. For further reference, CP requirements for skills will typically be worded as such;

"Defeat a similarly ranked enemy." - Normal
"Defeat a strong enemy." - Strong
"Defeat a very powerful enemy." - Awful
"Defeat a boss monster." - Boss

To summarize, this is not a bug; Fusion Bolt has CP requirements and you will need to find/hunt monsters of a specific Combat Rating in order to continue training Fusion Bolt.

(Combat Rating is not always indicative of a monster's actual innate strength and you will hate this mechanic in the future.)

THICCthighssavelives wrote: »

^ You guys make good points. It's very distasteful for a company to release free content then take it away and make it pay-only. I think the answer is to make future generations from this point on VIP-only. The following point is moot now, but to clarify: I originally intended for only VIP players to make erg weapons, but for anyone to be able to buy and use them. Also, I intended for Festi-Doki Island to be available for everyone during events, but VIP members could visit at any time.

Btw, yes I am just picking and choosing things to make VIP-only based on my own personal preference/bias. I don't have access to the entire playerbase's preferences, so I use my own as a foundation. And yes I am trying to make things VIP-only for the sake of it. The way I see it, mabi has a lot of content they're not charging for, and they could generate good revenue by putting certain things behind VIP. This is an alternative to releasing new content in gacha form, which leads to having multiple gacha sales at the same time.

To me, storyline content is what can bring players back to Mabinogi so storyline content simply isn't something I personally want to be VIP-only. I can at least understand the desire however; the counterargument for me would be to treat it as expansions, maybe allow players to buy special tokens that can be sold to others so that everyone has a chance to work towards unlocking storyline content. That would be my compromise. As for Doki Doki Island, as an area that VIPs can access year round, I would be okay with that, especially if everyone would have access to it during events. Same for Festia, I suppose.

As for VIP in and of itself? As said before, KR has updated VIP multiple times, making it something worth having in terms of the bonuses it provides. I honestly don't know why NA hasn't updated VIP service over here to match KR's VIP service since that alone is definitely a loss of profit in terms of VIP service fees. At the very least the Homestead Housing Update provides at least a reason to maintain VIP service for the free housing leases for those who want to utilize the research bonuses from the research stations you can create inside Homestead houses.

As for gachas in and of itself, I have no problem with them for what it's worth, but I can understand players getting frustrated with how many there tends to be. In my case I just have a tolerance for them, especially compared to my experiences with certain other business models implemented in certain other games.

THICCthighssavelives wrote: »

I don't really care about that stuff from old mabi you talked about and implied I would like. I want exactly what I suggested in my post: Storyline from G19 through G21 made VIP-only. Avalon, Erg NPC, Eidos made VIP-only. Festia+Doki made VIP-only. Squires stay free to play, because I like them. I'd also throw in just a few VIP-only skills, like Wine Making, Mushroom Gathering, chain talent, Artifact Restoration, just little things.

What do you think about the above suggestions?

1.) Making G19-G21 VIP-only after it's been released as free content would both cause an uproar and cause issues; as an example, how would such a change effect those without VIP but have access to Crusader skills/Nascent Divinity? More importantly, considering how skills like Divine Link can be extremely important for the end game, wouldn't such a change cause a large P2W discrepancy between those who have VIP and those who don't? Isn't that something we don't want?

2.) Not being able to have access to Avalon or Erg without VIP access would also cause an uproar and issues; again, you're talking about changing content into paid content after the fact when it has been released as free content for months. More importantly, Erg is another system that's important for end game due to the bonus stats and abilities it can provide for weapons, and again without VIP access how would those with Erg'd weapons and such be handled? Also, since you're talking about restricting G19-G21 to be VIP-only, making Eidos VIP-only is irrelevant when it's likely Nascent Divinity would be VIP-only as well.

With that being said, if you're wondering why people complain about reforges all the time, their nigh end game necessity is why. Which is why it's so irritating to have to pay for them, even more so to have to deal with shady reforge resellers who probably aren't getting their stashes of Fine Reforging Tools legitimately.

3.) Festia has been used before for events, most recently for Halloween; restricting Festia to VIPs only can make it impossible to complete some events. Plus, Festia is already barely used as it is; restricting Festia to be VIP-only would kill it. Same for Doki Doki Island; that's intended to be an event area in the grand scheme of things so again, restricting it would kill the content and make it impossible to complete certain events.

4.) Squires should be VIP-only too if you're going to play that card; don't show bias just because you "like the content". If anything, that shows that you're blindly suggesting content to be converted to VIP-only content for the sake of it and nothing else, and shows that you'd likely not pay for it yourself.

5.) Wine Making is required for ranking Musical Knowledge; making it VIP-only would make it impossible to rank Musical Knowledge above Rank 4 without VIP service without having to use Skill Training Seals. (Unless you want to suggest making Adventurer Seals/the Seal Merchant VIP-only, then those without VIP service are screwed out of Rank 1 Musical Knowledge without paying for service.)

Making Mushroom Gathering VIP-only would be pointless and serve nothing except making a pointless paywall.

Restricting an entire talent behind VIP service would both be a giant paywall (especially for new players) and would kill the main point of Mabinogi; being able to utilize multiple skills without being restricted in the process. End game viability is debatable of course but that's a topic for another thread.

Artifact Investigation being VIP-only would again be pointless and serve nothing except making a pointless paywall. At least this skill has the benefit of not being necessary since Voight can handle artifact restoration.

Making "little things" VIP-only would be irritating and the vague nature of "little things" has the potential to put paywalls everywhere. Not exactly intuitive.

THICCthighssavelives wrote: »

It works for Runescape.

I can imagine it now! Avalon and the related storylines and content are all VIP-only. Erg and Eidos are VIP only, but can be sold to and used by free, non-paying players. Festia is revamped, merged with Doki Doki Island, and made VIP-only. It's glorious

Mabinogi is not Runescape. More importantly, Runescape started as a F2P game and expanded with P2P content over time; because of this, Runescape is 90% a P2P game in both versions (RS3 and OSRS) with a relatively small (but decently packed, for what its worth) F2P portion which is often overrun with bots and most of the time only serves as a unlimited free trial with the potential to earn membership in-game with bonds (that someone else has to pay for). And in my case, Runescape's business model irritates me, especially in RS3's case where Jagex double dips with both a membership fee (to access the 90% of the game you can't access as a F2P) and blatant microtransactions through Treasure Hunter that makes Mabinogi's multiple gachas seem like the most balanced microtransactions ever in comparison.

And if we're going to be really honest, Mabinogi was like this in its early incarnation; you had to pay for service to access storylines, be able to use bags, and be able to utilize your entire bank tab. On top of this, if you wanted to progress in Mabinogi at all through rebirthing, you had to pay for character cards on top of that. Players also were only ever given the one free character card (compared to the six new players receive these days, not counting support cards), so if you wanted additional characters (for more inventory/bank space, for example) you had to pay for that too. In this sense, Mabinogi in its early days was very much a "pay to progress" MMO; you had to pay to access storylines, you had to pay to expand your inventory with bags and utilize the entire bank tab, and you had to pay to rebirth, which is required if you want to actually progress.

These restrictions were heavily alleviated over time, of course. But that was Mabinogi in its early days; it was very unfriendly to new players, you were heavily restricted in content access unless you paid for service, and if you wanted to progress you had to pay for character cards to rebirth on top of maintaining service. These are all aspects of Mabinogi that I really do not want to have be applied again, especially when Mabinogi over time has been redesigned to better support a more F2P atmosphere compared to the pay to progress atmosphere that early Mabinogi fostered. Maybe you would be okay with it, but for me personally (and likely for a lot of people) this is not a road that I want Mabinogi to go down again. Rather, I'd have them update VIP service (finally) and make maintaining service be actually worthwhile instead of being a hard requirement to access storyline content.

THICCthighssavelives wrote: »

I wouldn't have a problem if certain generations and advanced storylines were pay only.

I'd rather not have Mabinogi go down that road again; still remember back in the day when you needed service to do G1 or even be able to use bags.

(Not having access to the other half of the bank inventory was especially frustrating.)